Growing up human is uniquely a matter of social relations rather than biology. What we learn from connections within the family takes the place of instincts that program the behavior of animals; which raises the question, how good are these connections?
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In point of fact, I am the very opposite of an anthropomorphiser. I don't hold animals superior or even equal to humans. The whole case for behaving decently to animals rests on the fact that we are the superior species. We are the species uniquely capable of imagination, rationality and moral choice - and that is precisely why we are under an obligation to recognize and respect the rights of animals.
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You dehumanize a man as much by returning him to nature - by making him one with rocks, vegetation, and animals - as by turning him into a machine. Both the natural and the mechanical are the opposite of that which is uniquely human. Nature is a self-made machine, more perfectly automated than any automated machine. To create something in the image of nature is to create a machine, and it was by learning the inner working of nature that man became a builder of machines. It is also obvious that when man domesticated animals and plants he acquired self-made machines for the production of food, power, and beauty.
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We are, perhaps, uniquely among the earth's creatures, the worrying animal. We worry away our lives, fearing the future, discontent with the present, unable to take in the idea of dying, unable to sit still.
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Surely the day will come when color means nothing more than skin tone, when religion is seen uniquely as a way to speak one's soul; when birth...
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The circumstances of your life have uniquely qualified you to make a contribution. And if you don't make that contribution, nobody else can make it.
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History balances the frustration of how far we have to go with the satisfaction of how far we have come. It teaches us tolerance for the human shortcomings and imperfections which are not uniquely of our generation, but of all time.
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Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world.
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Promises are the uniquely human way of ordering the future.
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Play is a uniquely adaptive act, not subordinate to some other adaptive act, but with a special function of its own in human experience.
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It still holds true that man is most uniquely human when he turns obstacles into opportunities.
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